Tag: “World Science Fiction Convention”

The “Surreal Worlds of Southeast Asia” panel at #WorldCon75

Victor Fernando R. OcampoLeave a comment

Singapore-based Speculative Fiction author and Lontar Journal founding editor Jason Erik Lundberg moderated a lively panel on Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction at yesterday’s #Worldcon75, with Nebula award- winning author Aliette de Bodard and myself. Like my other panel, this one was quite well attended and we were very happy to see that so many people were interested in Southeast Asian speculative fiction.

Aliette and I did a reading from one of our works and we spent the rest of the time taking questions and recommending many fine SEA authors from the region such as Dean Alfar (Philippines), Zen Cho (Malaysia) and JY Yang (Singapore).

P.S. – I provided a quick sneak peak of my first short story collection “The Infinite Library and Other Stories” during this panel 🙂

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Loncon 3 Panels

Victor Fernando R. Ocampo2 Comments

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I am quite pleased to announce that I will be speaking about Filipino and Singaporean SF/F on two panels at Loncon 3 today. These are:

The World at Worldcon: SF/F in South and South-East Asia

Saturday 13:30 – 15:00, London Suite 2 (ExCeL)

South and South-East Asia include a huge span of nations, cultures and languages, so does it make any sense to talk of “Asian SF”? What are the traditions and touchstones of fantastical storytelling in South and South-East Asia? What is the state of genre there, and how have shared myths and a joint heritage of colonialism influenced it? A panel of writers and critics from India, Pakistan, Malaysia and The Philippines compare notes.

Mahvesh Murad (Moderator) , Zen Chow, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Victor Fernando R. Ocampo, Aishwarya Subramanian

Saving the World. All of It.

Saturday 20:00 – 21:00, Capital Suite 13 (ExCeL)

When aliens invade, why do they almost always hit New York? With a few partially-honourable exceptions, such as Pacific Rim and District 9, the American-led alliances of Independence Day and its ilk are still the norm for SF cinema’s supposedly global catastrophes. What is it like to watch these films outside the Anglophone world? Do attempts to move away from American exceptionalism feel real, or are they just window-dressing? And how do different countries deal with apocalypse in their own cinematic traditions?

Victor Fernando R. Ocampo (Moderator) , Yasser Bahjatt, Irena Raseta, Aishwarya Subramanian, Naomi Karmi