#SEAsteampunk on SFSignal!

Editrixes Jaymee and Joyce were interviewed recently for SFSignal! Check it out: "Southeast Asian Steampunk"

More reviews!

Reviews for The SEA is Ours continue to roll in from all corners!

Here's one from Her Commonplace Blog, which is interestingly excited and dramatically critical at the same time:

The intro to the anthology felt really dramatic, but in a good way. Felt quite empowering and inspiring and I challenge any other SEAsian SFF author out there to read it and not feel inspired!! My only issue is that saying “hella queer” in the intro felt a bit out of place, compared to the rest of the tone that is used in the intro. But maybe that’s just me being a bit nitpicky…

FanGirl Nation had really cool adjectives for us: "rich, unexpected, and outstanding." Big words!

Gnomes from Gnome Reviews also got to our book! With a satisfying response:

To readers unfamiliar with Southeast Asian culture and folklore, this book presents many opportunities for learning and research. The gnomes fell down the Wikipedia rabbit hole every time a new location, historical reference, or frightening creature was mentioned. This meant that it took (a lot) longer to finish the collection, but they learned a lot and were able to fully understand the stories.

Why yes, yes, that is part of the point.

Sean Wright, the Bookanaut, took a while to read our anthology, but despite two hard drive crashes, he gave us a wonderful review:

An intriguing selection that is reminiscent of Alternative Alamat in some ways. This *is* steampunk, but where that might cause potential readers to roll eyes and think "not another clockwork collection", The Sea is Ours is much more South East Asian alternative history and is all the better for it. The steampunk is subtle in most cases and where it isn't it’s original.

Yessssssss @ at that shoutout to Alternative Alamat, edited by contributor Paolo Chikiamco! 

IndieGoGo Campaign End

On Oct 23rd, we finished our IndieGoGo campaign at $10,101, or some 125% of our original goal. Which means we achieved the Teacher's Edition! And have some extra for future awesome projects! Thanks to everyone who donated, and supported us by signal boosting our campaign.

Perks will be sent out when our publisher gets back from Europe at the end of November. He practically lives at the post office when sending out perks, so please be patient!

Thanks again, and we'll see you when we see you! 

IndieGoGo has hit 100%!

We just hit 100% funded on our IndieGoGo campaign today! With still 16 days left, there's plenty of time to order the book directly from our publisher, and get ebooks besides. If we hit $9,000, we will also develop a teaching edition of the anthology. Please continue supporting us! We appreciate every cent. 

Pandora Society Interview

Ofeibea Loveless of Airship Ashanti was very kind to interview the editrixes for the Pandora Society!

Free stuff!

For the month of the campaign, contributors Timothy Dimacali and Paolo Chikiamco are making some previous work available for free!

In "Skygypsies," Timothy teams up with John Raymond Bumanglag to give us a look into a possible future for the Badjau people, who are also known as 'seagypsies.' (The Malay-speaking world may recognize that name, though we spell it "Bajau.")

"High Society" is Paolo's collaboration with artist Hannah Buena, a story set in the Animata universe that Paolo's story in The SEA is Ours is part of. Anti-colonial pushback from the spirits of the land!

Enjoy!

Starred Review!

This just in: The SEA Is Ours received a Starred Review from Publishers Weekly!

A couple of lines from the review:

The tropes and trappings of steampunk alternate history bind together this exciting anthology of stories set in and inspired by the broadly defined region of Southeast Asia (SEA). ... Even the slighter stories have the craft, perspective, and components that merit savoring, and the finest would be worth considering for any year’s best anthology.

Congratulations to our writers! Our IndieGoGo continues apace!

50% Funded!

As of the third day, our IndieGoGo is now 51% funded!

A special thanks goes to Anna Gustafsson Chen, whose donation pushed us over the 50%  mark!

Joyce and Jaymee recorded more videos as goofy update bonuses for little milestones, so when we got to 40%, we uploaded one for viewing pleasure! Here we are talking about Singapore's supertrees and crystal domes.

New Special Guest Reward!

Our fundraiser continues apace! Today we hit 38% funded. The Dean Alfar Short Story and Eve Shi Novel rewards are still up for grabs.

Also, romance novelist Jeannie Lin is joining our roster of Special Guests! For $150, you get all the perks plus your name incorporated into her next steampunk short story!

Jeannie's latest work includes The Gunpowder Chronicles series of steampunk romance novels set around the Opium Wars. Many of her novels are set in Tang Dynasty China.

Keep an eye out for Jeannie's Special Guest Reward!

Asian American Press mention!

We're up on Asian American Press! Friend Bryan once interviewed editrixes Jaymee and Joyce, and the IGG campaign gets a mention in the main news section under Books!

Official Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: sea.steampunk@gmail.com

Maryland—Small publisher Rosarium Publishing will release The SEA Is Ours: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia this fall.

            Edited by Singaporean novelist Joyce Chng and Malaysian writer and critic Jaymee Goh, this anthology redefines steampunk from a Southeast Asian perspective. Usually described as Victorian science fiction, steampunk has quickly gained critical mass from its disparate beginnings as a niche aesthetic into a world-wide subcultural movement. Multicultural steampunk has always been part of its development, exemplified by works such as James Ng’s Imperial Steamworks art pieces, Elizabeth LaPensée’s short film “The Path Without End,” and anthologies like STEAMFUNK! and Steampunk World. The SEA Is Ours is the first collection to curate steampunk stories from across Southeast Asia and its diaspora.

            Both editors have long been involved in speculative fiction. Joyce Chng is the author of several urban fantasy and Young Adult novels written from a Singaporean perspective. Jaymee Goh, currently a PhD Candidate at the University of California, Riverside, has published short fiction and poetry, including a series of short stories set in a re-imagined Malaysia uncolonized by the West. Both are also consistent critics of the genre’s Eurocentrism. “We felt unsatisfied by representations of Southeast Asia in most of speculative fiction,” Goh says in an interview with Asian American Press, “and felt very strongly that steampunk would be a really great way of talking about the myriad histories in the region.”

            The SEA Is Ours will feature writers from Southeast Asia and beyond, with steampunk stories set in Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines. A blend of previously published writers and upcoming names, it is Southeast Asian not only in name but in essence, with 11 of its 12 writers being Southeast Asian or of Southeast Asian descent. Each story will have an accompanying illustration challenging common steampunk-associated visuals.

            Rosarium Publishing made a splash in speculative fiction with its 2013 anthology Mothership: Tales of Afrofuturism and Beyond. Since then it has published several ongoing comic titles such as Kid Code by graphic arts professor John Jennings, DayBlack by tattoo artist Keef Cross, and The Little Red Fish by designer Bizhan Khodabandeh. Its oeuvre includes young adult comic Malice in Ovenland by Micheline Hess, adult graphic memoir Jennifer’s Journal by Jennifer Cruté, and satirical novel Koontown Killing Kaper by founder Bill Campbell. Its most recent anthology release was Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany, which received high critical praise.

            The SEA Is Ours is set for a November 1, 2015 release. Its fundraising campaign runs September 23 to October 22, 2015. More information is available at http://igg.me/at/TheSEAisOurs. Further information and updates can be found at its blog (http://sea-steampunk.blogspot.com/) and Facebook Page (https://www.facebook.com/SoutheastAsianSteampunk). The editors can be reached for further comment through email (sea.steampunk@gmail.com) or through Twitter at @jolantru (Joyce Chng) and @jhameia (Jaymee Goh).

IndieGoGo Campaign has Launched!

We have just launched our IndieGoGo campaign! We are aiming for $8,000 (and have optimistically added stretch goals!) and our perks include a Singaporean speculative microfiction anthology edited by editrix Joyce and fellow Singaporean writer J.Y. Yang, and a steampunk Shakespeare anthology edited by editrix Jaymee and steampunk publisher Matthew Delman of the now defunct Doc Fantastique Books!

Hope you like the perks! 

Fundraiser Special Guests!

We are excited to announce that for the IndieGoGo campaign, we will have Special Guest Rewards!

You will have a chance to be written into a short story by Dean Francis Alfar, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, or Cecilia Tan!

Or become poem-stuff (that gets eaten by an eldritch horror) in a poem by Bryan Thao Worra!

Or transform into a character in one of Eve Shi's Indonesian pop novels!

Or get short story critiques by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz or Nin Harris!

Check back! Check back often! They will go up slowly over the course of the month. We start with Dean and Bryan in conjunction with Strange Horizon's fund drive! 

Review from Germany!

Early reviews of The SEA Is Ours ARCs keep coming in! This one is from Marcus Gilman from Germany! It's quite exciting to see our stuff in other non-British and non-North American hands. A little of what he had to say about our little anthology:

The SEA is Ours: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia is beautiful, exciting, and it makes your inner Steampunk landscape more complete. It also reminds you that there are cultures in this part of the world Europeans and North Americans usually know so little about, that are older than our own, that have their own histories, stories and ways to deal with the world.

Check it out, and also check out the whole site, Traveler's Steampunk Blog!  

#SEAsteampunk on Goodreads!

The SEA Is Ours is now on Goodreads! Check out all the early reviews of the anthology!

#SEAsteampunk @ Sci-Fi and Fantasy Reviews!

Chris Meadows of Sci-Fi and Fantasy Reviews got to our anthology, and gave us a 4 out of 5 stars on NetGalley even! It's hard to pick out singular nice things he said about us, but his concluding paragraph is really nice:

Is this a collection worth reading? If you’re looking for something different, absolutely. It promises, and delivers, a series of compelling imaginative journeys, often showing off new directions, and conceptual spaces I, for one, was unfamiliar with – and delighted to be introduced to. On that basis – yes, this one is worth a read!

Thanks, Chris!

Our first review!

AllOurWorlds has a review of The SEA Is Ours, the first of hopefully more!

An excerpt:

These stories fit an enormous amount of character and creativity into a small space, never relying on awkward exposition or “explaining” either the culture or the plot points. They characters exist without having to justify themselves to the audience. And the diversity goes beyond race and culture; there are some queer characters, some disabled characters. Most focus on women, women as inventors, leaders, explorers, and on women of different backgrounds working together- a nicely feminist tilt that’s becoming more prominent in steampunk.

Huzzah, thank you! 

NetGalley!

The SEA Is Ours is now available on NetGalley! If you are a science fiction reviewer looking for a fresh take on steampunk and/or Southeast Asia, click through and get the preview now! (And if you know a science fiction reviewer looking for a cool new anthology to review, let them know about us!)

Interview with Editrix!

Friend Bryan Thao Worra had a chat with editrix Joyce Chng at his blog, On The Other Side of the Eye. Check it out!

THE SEA IS OURS on Asian American Press!

Our friend and fellow SEAsian steampunk from the Laos side of the region, Bryan Thao Worra, interviewed editrix Jaymee recently for Asian American Press! "To The SEAs And Beyond" (which sounds like it should be its own anthology or TV series title) is now up for reading at your leisure!

Thanks, Bryan!

Check out his blog, On The Other Side Of The Eye!

The SEA Is Ours on Social Media

If you have a variety of social media and would like to keep abreast of The SEA Is Ours, you can find us a few places:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoutheastAsianSteampunk

On Twitter, search for the #SEAsteampunk hashtag! https://twitter.com/search?q=%23SEAsteampunk&src=typd

Joyce and Jaymee are on Twitter as @jolantru and @jhameia respectively.

Some of our writers are also available on Twitter: @zmquynh; @what_ho_olivia; @boygainvillea; @alessahinlo; @anitero; @tjdimacali; @wulfettenoire

Come chat!

Link: The Pandora Society Interviews Nisi Shawl

Ofeibea Loveless of the Airship Ashanti recently interviewed SF writer Nisi Shawl for the Pandora Society. Nisi is an editor and writer, and recently put together STORIES FOR CHIP, the Samuel Delany tribute anthology also forthcoming from our publisher Rosarium! She gave our humble anthology a little shoutout in her interview!

Link: Hari Ragat Games on SEAsian RPG Worldbuilding

World-building is often a stressful exercise for those of us who have no reference points for beginning, especially in non-European settings. We use our own countries / heritages as a starting point, but often, we know very little of neighbouring countries and how it comes together into regional politics.

Hari Ragat Games has a series of blogposts on the matter! In the first post on Building Southeast Asian Settings, he references the weather, geography, and religious influences on the local architecture. It's very useful to consider the monsoon when worldbuilding in steampunk, because the environment very much influences what kind of technologies we will build.

The second post is on "The Bamboo Network," following the flow of Chinese migration, as well as a brief outline of the histories of the various empires across Southeast Asia. Buncha ships, which is also very important to consider when writing in the maritime countries of SEAsia (which are the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam).

For the landlocked countries, Hari has a post on the highlands and a bit of highlander culture, which historically resist nation-state configurations of identity, economy, and politics. Hopefully, we'll see more stories featuring these peoples as time goes by!

Link: Pinoy-Culture Official Reference List

Pinoy-Culture on Tumblr is dedicated to showcasing the diversity of the Philippines. This post is a reference links list that is broken down according to four sections. It's a thorough read, and extremely educational.

Check out the rest of Pinoy-Culture.com!

Roundtable Questions: Pear Nuallak on "The Insects And Women Sing Together"

Pear Nuallak's story finishes off the anthology, a fine, crisp, clear, queer wine. They write to us from the seat of steampunk, England, and from there deliver this finely-crafted story of chittering clockwork bugs, lady spies, and ambitious village girls caught in the whirl of political upheaval.

Roundtable Questions: Ivanna Mendels on "Petrified"

Editrix Jaymee got really excited over Ivanna's story, which brings to life (well, kind of) an old familiar legend--Indonesians call him Malin Kundang, Malaysians call him Si Tenggang, but it is essentially the same story: a rich man passes through his home village, where his mother recognizes him. Ashamed of his past, he refuses to acknowledge her, and she curses him.

Roundtable Questions: zm quynh on "The Chamber of Souls"

Editrix Jaymee first met zn quynh at WisCon, tapping away at her laptop during downtimes between panels. She was working on a larger project, she said. This is her first ever short story sale, and we are pleased to introduce you to her work.

Roundtable Questions: Robert Liow on "Spider Here"

Robert Liow hails from Malaysia, and like editrix Jaymee, doesn't live there either. He writes to us from Singapore, where editrix Joyce is, with a story featuring a childhood game of FIGHTING SPIDERS. It's hard not to be aware that this is a thing. Combining this game with the technofantasy of steampunk, "Spider Here" has got the makings of a dramatic movie!

Roundtable Questions: Olivia Ho on "Working Woman"

Olivia Ho hails from Singapore, and writes to us from Scotland (ah, we fine expatriates) a story that rather fits the theme that informs many other stories in this anthology: COMPLETE LADY-FEST. Cranky ladies, angry ladies, confused ladies, curious ladies, smart, smart-mouthed, ladies ladies ladies. Also, an anecdote of explaining steampunk to her father.

Roundtable Questions: Kate Osias on "The Unmaking of the Cuadro Amoroso"

Kate Osias sent in a reprint from one of the famous Philippine Speculative Fiction Annuals, and as soon as we finished it, we were breathless. "We need this story," Editrix Jaymee shouted over the Internet at Editrix Joyce. "Yes," Joyce shouted back. "The Unmaking of the Cuadro Amoroso" infuses mathematics and the arts with a passion!

Roundtable Questions: Paolo Chikiamco on "Between Severed Souls"

We am so so so so pleased to be able to say that we are going to publish Paolo! We first came to know of him through his work at Rocket Kapre, and then at Usok. He told us about his steampunk comic, set in Spanish-era Philippines, High Society (purchasable on Kindle!), and the prequel, "On Wooden Wings," which has since been published in Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution. The story he has written for us, "Between Severed Souls," takes place between these two works.

Roundtable Questions: Alessa Hinlo on "The Last Aswang"

Alessa Hinlo is one of those small and fierce women that we Asians should be famed for. Editrix Jaymee had the joy of meeting her, after a long time being aware of each other through social networks, at WisCon last year.  Her story, "The Last Aswang," feels like a knife cutting in, and twisting. It is also a very strong example of steampunk that moves away from the materials we commonly associate with it to more nature-based materials--an indigenous steampunk form!

Roundtable Questions: L. L. Hill on "Ordained"

L. L. Hill is a woman of few words. So few, we actually don't know that much about her! We will call her a woman of economical words, since she is also a poetess. Her story in this anthology has that same quiet air about it, as all her emails do:

Roundtable Questions: Marilag Angway on "Chasing Volcanoes"

Marilag Angway's story, "Chasing Volcanoes," is a high-flying (literally) adventure (we have a few of these) filled with different kinds of women, moral grays, principles, politics, and compassion. She coined a neologism, "malambaso," for this story, which is a combination of two Tagalog words, to name flexible glass!

Roundtable Questions: Timothy Dimacali on "On The Consequence of Sound"

Timothy Dimacali is no stranger to science fiction fantasy. You can find him in Alternative Alamat, with "Keeper of My Sky," a retelling of a love story between an earth goddess and a god who holds up the sky.

We jokingly refer to this story as "the flying whale story." You can see them on the final cover of the anthology, floating in the distance.

THE SEA IS OURS News Blog!

Welcome to the news blog for The Sea Is Ours: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia! Currently, information about this anthology is a bit all over the place: Jaymee's Tumblr, Joyce's Tumblr, our respective Twitter feeds, Jaymee's steampunk blog (and regular blog), Joyce's blog--it's a mess! To keep things together, we will post updates here and on the Facebook page. Add this blog to your feed! (Or, Like the Facebook page! if you are on Facebook, that is, which we are not all on.)

Things like dates and whatnot are a little in the air at the moment, so please be patient. We are definitely running a fundraiser over the summer--if you love the idea of this anthology, please consider putting in a dollar or so, or signal boosting us to people who can.

Over the next couple of weeks we will roll out a series of roundtable interviews that I conducted with our writers back in February. We will also throw out some questions to consider when talking about Southeast Asia in genre fiction, in particular steampunk. Please check the #SEAsteampunk hashtag on Twitter for new updates.

We have a tentative release date of October, 2015. We are very excited to finally bring to you this anthology!