SALIK SHAH

Author: Salik Shah

  • McDonald’s vs Kamadhenu — Debkumar Chakrabarti

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    Kolkata-based artist and professor Debkumar Chakrabarti on how he sees Indian capitalism: “McDonald’s stands as a representative of global capitalism… and Kamadhenu was a [miraculous] cow. Whatever you want, it’ll give it to you. That is to me some sort of representative of the Indian type of capitalism. [In my art,] I try to show…

  • The Asian SF Issue – Mithila Review

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    The “Asian SF” double issue of Mithila Review is now out. Contributors: Aliette de Bodard, Alyssa Wong, Isabel Yap, John Chu, JY Yang and Priya Sharma, Lavie Tidhar, Glen Hirshberg, Mia S-N, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Mark Russell, Dean Francis Alfar, Ng Yi-Sheng, Isha Karki, David S. Golding, Charles Tan, Jennifer Crow, Shobhana Kumar, Ken Poyner, Niyati…

  • On the Challenges of Reading, Writing & Publishing Science Fiction & Fantasy in South Asia

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    Cover Illustration: “Enclosed” by Ashim Shakya, from Issue 4 of Mithila Review. In my new Strange Horizons column, I talk about Geoff Ryman’s story that inspired the Mithila Review / Asian Science Fiction & Fantasy project and my earliest forays into SF as a reader. My childhood revolved around comics and other things but none as…

  • The Flight of South Asian Science Fiction and Fantasy

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    The inaugural issue of Mithila Review is out! It features speculative fiction, poetry and nonfiction from writers and artists around the world: India, Nepal, Pakistan, Uganda, Canada, United Kingdom, America, etc. The gorgeous cover art was done by Steve McDoland.  See you there!

  • Strange Horizons: 2015 In Review

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    Salik Shah
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    My relationship with speculative fiction took a serious turn in 2015. Darko Suvin’s Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (1979) and Seo-Young Chu’s Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep? (2010) captivated me as much as critical notes and essays on the craft of writing and storytelling by Samuel R Delany, Damon Knight and Ursula Le K Guin.…

  • Annie-Ted Complex

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    Photograph by José Mandojana / The California Sunday Magazine ^  I’ve reached a phase where my fast-food approach to creative writing simply doesn’t work. It’s not enough to get printed. Now I’m asking editors to hold a piece because I think it could be better, which means I’m making no new submissions for a while. And…

  • The Apex Book of World SF 4

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    Salik Shah
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    The Archivist by Julie Dillon © My review of The Apex Book of World SF 4 is now up at Strange Horizons. Excerpt: The first story in the collection is Usman T. Malik’s Bram Stoker-winning “The Vaporization Enthalpy Of a Peculiar Pakistani Family.” I’ve read it many times here and elsewhere. This time I was struck by the author’s…

  • The Devourers by Indra Das

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    My review of Indra Das’s debut novel, ‘The Devourers,’ is now up at Strange Horizons. Excerpt: Much of the conflict in The Devourers comes from Alok, Fenrir, and Gévaudan’s guilt and inability to reproduce among their own kind, and Cyrah’s struggle to come to terms with the werewolves’ identity and sexuality. Ultimately, she refuses to become…

  • Reading and Writing Long Poems

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    Once I get inside a long poem, said Ron Padgett, I never want to get out. That’s what happened to me when I started reading Anne Carson’s ‘The Glass Essay‘ on her birthday, earlier this week. I didn’t know the poem would be 7877 words long, which turned out to be a good thing. I…