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"Punggol" by Ben Slater captured my heart. And the book opened my eyes to the world of Sci-Fi. Never was a fan, but I think I am slowly changing my mindset on it now.
A mixed bag of speculative short stories, but mostly good stuff. The stories by The Centipede Collective and Dave Chua are the clear winners.
I first travelled to Singapore when I was just 8, and have been there half a dozen times since. It's a place with a unique mix of cultures and history, and the stories in Lion Eats Fish capture this well. Last Time Kopitiam by Marc de Foite, the tale of a trader sent to Singapore who is "quite adept at handling futures and derivatives", captures historical and modern Singapore well. There are a number of “flower punk” stories—think steampunk but with a healthy dose of botany, and I really enjoye...
To be frank, the majority of stories in this eclectic collection of 20+ pieces I found to be so so. A few were more to my taste, which are the less whimsical and more realistic ones. Or ones where the story seemed to be going somewhere and had an ending. Many others were a tad too artistic and abstract for my liking, the imaginative musings of their characters taking surreal turns and then abruptly terminating with no seeming conclusion. Inevitably there were quite a few that turned to the super...
Admittedly Fish Eats Lion is one of my first few dips into local literature, and it doesn't disappoint! I picked it up and read it under the eyes of an aspiring speculative fiction writer looking out for how writers merge our cultural nuances with sci fi/ fantasy tropes. There were some stories that felt a little too heavy handed with the shoe horning of cultural colloqualisms, but they were offset by other stories written with great fludity, and embraced our local flavours under a really unique...
I wish there were more anthologies like this in Singapore; speculative fiction practically does not exist in the country. This is a great and productive start; Singaporeans need to dream more and exploit their dreams for their fiction like what these authors here have done. A rich, confounding, exciting and surrealistic read.
Not all the stories in here are winners, but those that are, offer a truly unique view of speculative fiction with a Southeast Asian flavor - from family ghosts and magic lucky numbers, to living cars and a Singaporean post-apocalypse. Plus, you can catch some earlier writing from authors like JY Yang, who went on to write the Tensorate series.
In writing this review, I was considering the ways these 22 stories were conceived and executed. Broadly speaking, I identified three approaches.The stories I first recognized as forming a potential group (8 of 22) were marked by a sense of melancholia. Stories like Ben Slater's 'Punggol' or Justin Ker's '010011010100010101001101010011110101001001011001' focused on some feeling-turned-obsession, and combined this with a sense of place. In Tan Ming Chua's 'Open', the core of the story is a realiz...
This collection of Singaporean speculative fiction was a a bit of a mixed bag. A few of the stories were really great, well realized explorations of the unknown set against the backdrop of Singapore. Some of them were disappointing and dull. Perhaps most frustrating of all, some of them seemed to be non-speculative fiction that had been altered at the last minute to jam in a speculative element, seeming to be more afterthought than anything. Nevertheless the best stories were a delight. Overall
Didn't realised there're so many good writers in Singapore, in Sci Fi some more!
This anthology promises much but fails to deliver. Some stories, such as Marc de Faoite's 'Last Time KopiTiam', evoke Singapore but fail to make it tangible for the reader. The other stories mistake thinly-sketched spec-fic ideas for decent plot and nuance.Nice cover art by the way.
This book is composed of several short stories written by various authors falling in the category of science fiction. Some stories are set in the past and others in the future. Like many short stories books and science fiction books, I rated this one 3 stars right on the middle. Some stories were interesting while others not. Some I understood the behind story meaning while other I felt clueless about the subject treated. I found one story quite morbid. Those, who've read my reviews before, know...
