My first YA story “Infinite Degrees of Freedom” was was accepted in “Science Fiction: Filipino Fiction for Young Adults”.
This far-future coming-of-age tale is about a boy trying to bond with his estranged (and distant) father while on a road trip to salvage nano-tech from old battlefields.
This work also features a lesser known Filipino mythical creature called a “Sigben” or “Sigbin” which has been described by various sources as a bloodthirsty Chupacabra-like chimera that’s half dog, half reptile or half goat (more from Wikipedia). Yes, its an obscure Visayan monster in a space opera setting. So sue me.
Before this story I had no idea how hard it actually was to write YA fiction. I’m happy I did and I might write more in the future if people like this.
Thanks once again to editors Dean Francis Alfar and Kenneth Yu !

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Published by Victor Fernando R. Ocampo
Victor Fernando R. Ocampo is a Singapore-based Filipino writer. He is the author of The Infinite Library and Other Stories (Math Paper Press, 2017) and Here be Dragons (Canvas Press, 2015), which won the Romeo Forbes Children’s Story Award in 2012.
His writing has appeared in many publications including Apex Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, Likhaan Journal, Strange Horizons, Philippine Graphic, Science Fiction World and The Quarterly Literature Review of Singapore, as well as anthologies like The Best New Singapore Short Stories, Fish Eats Lion: New Singaporean Speculative Fiction, Lontar: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction, Maximum Volume: Best New Philippine Fiction, and the Philippine Speculative Fiction series.
Visit his blog at vrocampo.com or follow him on Twitter @VictorOcampo
View all posts by Victor Fernando R. Ocampo